Rating

Price

Pros

Cons

Light leak around the edges, the top half of the display is darker than the bottom half, display weighted to define shadows, loses highlights, menu buttons cramped

Hanns.G HE225DPB LCD monitor review

The market for budget-priced LCD panels is fiercely competitive, often with some corner-cutting to get the price down as low as possible. Which is why it’s something of a surprise to see that the general build quality of the Hanns.G HE225 is pleasingly good. The stand is all plastic, with no metal screws, but once locked on feels solid enough.

The back end includes the power transformer but still manages to present a very slender profile. That does mean the connections are all under the backplate, which is harder to get to, but once plugged in, you can leave them there. There are connections for analogue 9-pin D-Sub and DVI-D as well as an input for sound as there a couple of tiny 1.5W speakers built in. The front buttons use the usual Hanns.G arrangement but are quite close together, with the power on/off being right next to the confirm button.

While the on-screen menus are easy to navigate in themselves, the buttons make it less so. This is important as you may well be using them to try to counter the display which has too much white in it. Dark tones are easy to tell apart but the white ones on the test cards blended into each other. There are four video modes accessible here that include PC (bright), Movie (dull), Game (Saturated) and Eco (weak).

The actual brightness rating is 250cd/m which is plenty for a monitor at this price point though the contrast ratio of 1000:1 is bordering on the low side of average. In practice though, there will be no problems unless the room it is used in is particularly bright. The refresh rate is 5ms which is also around what you might expect and again, there’s no ghosting or any refresh problems, no matter what you throw around the screen.

The only real issues are ones of light leak and the consistency of the display from top to bottom. To start, there’s lots of leak noticeable on the left and right when using a black screen test. There’s no darkening of the corners on a white screen test but it isn’t a consistent white. That’s borne out by other tests which showed that the bottom half of the display is brighter than the top half – no matter what viewing angle is used. A pity really as text and structures on the screen come out very well, being really crisp and defined for a budget TN panel. The other point to note is that when running the power consumption is typically only 24W which makes it a low power option if it’s going to be on all day.

OUR VERDICT

At this kind of price point you either expect build quality or display quality to take a back seat. Well, the general build quality is fine but it isn’t sealed well so there are light leaks and the display isn’t as good. It’s certainly a competitive price, and will do a job, but it’s more suited for office-style applications than photographic or visual-based ones.